Espanola
Espanola
We woke up at 5:45 and sunlight came streaming through our tiny window at 5:50. the ship is at anchor and swaying gently, but swaying nonetheless. (I do not want to take any more trips on a boat this small. The 50 passenger and 25 crew vessel Seabird that we were on during our Lewis and Clark cruise was very steady compared to this. It may be partly the size of the vessel and partly the state of the water we are in.)
Breakfast at 7:30 today with an 8:30 leave time scheduled. This was another wet landing but this time is was a soft, sandy beach. We walked among sea lions and sea lion pups for about 45 minutes. Mother sea lions nurse the pups for an entire year. They go out to fish during the day and return in the evening to nurse the young. If the mother is killed by a predator at sea, the baby will die. Sea lions do not feed each other’s pups. The year old pups are nearly as big as the mothers. The mature males are larger than the females and the lead males are very large and aggressive with other males. We observed on mother sea lion rescue her infant who had fallen between the cracks of some large rocks. She picked him up by the scruff of his neck with her mouth. We heard young pups squealing for their mothers who were out fishing for themselves so that they could produce enough milk to feed the pups. It was truly amazing to be able to walk so close to wildlife and to cause no alarm. In fact if the animals were on the tourist path, the tourists had to wait.
We went back to the boat for lunch and to decide which optional activity we wanted to do- snorkel, kayak, or ride in the pangas/zodiacs. We opted for the panga ride and we rode around the area for about an hour at a nice slow pace along the side of cliffs where we saw gulls, boobies, crabs, sea lions, pelicans, and a lava heron. We went into a semi-circular cave and observed ocean flashback at the back wall of the cave. It was really neat!
Then is was back to the boat for a little quiet time, lunch and a short rest. We left the boat again at about 3:00. This was a dry landing but very scary. We had six foot waves and very rough seas, and we had to disembark the moving panga by stepping off onto stone steps. Yikes!! We hiked about a mile over lava rock. This was probably the roughest hike we have ever done. It would have been impossible without walking sticks. Donald fell once and skinned and bruised his knee and wrist in addition to causing a temporary malfunction of his camera when the lens was displaced and the camera was nonfunctional until we figured out what was wrong. Someone else in the group had band-aids. All I had was a packet of hand sanitizer wipes even though I had a first aid kit back on the boat.
Along our walk we saw sea lions, sea iguanas by the dozens, blue-footed boobies doing elaborate mating dances, Nazca boobies sitting on nests with eggs in them, and albatross’ also doing mating dances. It is still amazing to be able to walk within a couple of feet of these mating and nesting birds. We also observed and walked very close to a Galapagos hawk feasting on a sea iguana. The hawk seemed completely unfazed by all the people taking photos.
Near the end of our walk along the cliffs we saw an impressive blowhole in an old lava flow shelf. The waves in the aquamarine colored water with the sunlight shining on and through it, was breathtakingly beautiful. We have some great photos. We went back to the boat at 5:45 – just before sundown. We had the usual debriefing at 6:30 and dinner at 7:00. We were back in our cabin by 8:30. It was quite a day. We are under sail and rocking wildly. Time for another ginger tablet. Actually I have been taking ginger just before meals and at bedtime since we got on the boat.
Helen’s Journal
Wednesday, October 25, 2006